Inside the Gas Chambers

by Shlomo Venezia

  The trucks took us to the big prison at Haidari. There must have been nearly a hundred and fifty of us. There wasn’t any room for us in the main building. They dumped us into the shower block in the prison yard. There was nothing, no beds, no straw mattresses, just cement on the floor and showers over our heads. We were packed in tightly, and there was hardly any room to stretch out. It was really uncomfortable and difficult. In the yard we could hear regular shots – the summary executions of political prisoners. Our block was near the barbed wire and we were guarded by soldiers wearing a uniform that I didn’t recognize, but resembling an Italian uniform. Stupid as I was, I spoke to one of the soldiers standing guard and told him, “I’m Italian! Do you think I could get away?” Of course, he immediately pointed his rifle at me, so I backed off and put my hands up, saying “Okay, drop it! I didn’t say anything!” He was one of the Italian Fascists from the militia who collaborated with the Germans. In one sense, he saved my life, because if he had told me that I could try to escape, I certainly would have been killed; there were German soldiers at every corner, posted on watchtowers every twenty yards.

  Did you really think you might have been able to escape?

  Yes, all the time, since I knew what had happened in Salonika. If, in the synagogue, they’d listened to us when we tried to explain to them what the Germans had done in Salonika – the forced labor, the ghetto, and the deportations – perhaps they might have been able to force their way out, instead of waiting until it was too late. They could have escaped; they should have made the attempt. Some of them would surely have been killed but, in any case, they were heading to their deaths. People kept on hoping that, if they did what they were told, they’d be spared. The reality was the complete opposite.

  Who was there with you?

  My brother and my cousins, Dario and Yakob Gabbai. Yakob was married, he was twelve years older than his brother Dario, who must have been twenty-one or twenty-two.

  In addition to the little suitcase, I had on me five gold coins that my mother had entrusted to me. She’d also given five to my brother, but Maurice had immediately spent the money. My mother had taken those ten coins from among the jewels that her brothers and her parents had given to her before being deported. She had always categorically refused to take anything at all out of that envelope, since she was convinced that her brothers would return and would need that money to start up their lives again. Other people could have used this money to escape, but my mother was too honest and kept telling us: “Anyone who touches this money had better watch out!” Seeing that the situation was becoming serious, she had resigned herself to taking a few gold coins to give them to us, if our lives should be in danger. But in Haidari I almost lost the five coins that I had carefully preserved….

  And indeed, the day after we arrived in the prison some Germans turned up and, yelling and lashing out, they made us go out into the yard to line up five by five. After they’d picked up anything of interest from the empty hall, they settled down there and made us go in, in groups of five, ordering us to take off all our clothes so they could search us, and steal everything they wanted. Those who didn’t immediately hand over any valuable objects in their possession were severely beaten.

  I always used to make sure I was among the last in situations like this, so as to have time to see what was happening. All of a sudden, when half the people had gone through, I heard cries of pain coming from inside. The Germans were beating up a boy who’d hidden a gold coin in his trousers.

  As well as my gold coins, I had a Doxa watch that I’d bought second-hand from a German, in exchange for cigarettes. Under the brand name there was an inscription: “Shimshi.” This was the name of a Salonika Jew from whom the German had stolen the watch. This was the first watch I’d ever owned and I didn’t want the Germans to get their hands on it. So I put it on the ground and crushed it, so that I would at least have the satisfaction of not letting them have it.

  As for the gold coins, I decided to give one to my brother, one to Dario and one to Yakob, and to keep two on myself. I put the first coin into my mouth and swallowed it. They did the same. Except that in my case, the second coin didn’t go down and I almost choked. I didn’t have any bread or water, but it was out of the question that I was going to just choke to death there. So I worked up as much saliva as I could, and eventually the coin went down. In front of us, some idiots were spreading the rumor that the Germans had an X-ray machine. My brother was panic-stricken. I told myself that in any case it was too late and there wasn’t anything else we could do to make the coins come out immediately. So I told myself, “whatever will be, will be.”

  When it was our turn to go in, the Germans hardly searched us. They’d probably picked up enough things and were in a hurry to finish. When we got back to the shower block, our little suitcase had vanished, but we’d been able to keep the main things. The next day, each of us went to the toilet to lay what I called “the golden egg.” My cousin Dario went first; nothing. His brother Yakob; nothing. My brother said he didn’t want to look. The second day, Dario laid “the golden egg,” and so did my cousin Yakob and I. My brother; still nothing. He came to see us four days later to tell us that he too finally had laid “the golden egg.”

  How long did you stay in that prison at Haidari?

  Seven or eight days. To begin with, I was furious that I’d allowed myself to get caught without trying to escape. Then, little by little, we had to get used to it. My brother, my cousins and I kept thinking over what we could have done, what we should have done.

  Among us there were many people who came from other regions of Greece, from little villages in which there weren’t more than a dozen or so Jews. They’d been captured and sent to Athens, as were, later on, some of the Jews of Corfu and Rhodes. And, once Salonika had been emptied, all the Jews who had been arrested had to pass through Athens. It had become the transit station.

  Do you remember on what day you were deported?

  It was the end of March or even April 1. We were imprisoned on the day of the Greek national holiday, March 25, and we stayed in prison for a week. I know the train arrived in Auschwitz on April 11, and I think the journey lasted for eleven days, so it must have been April 1.6

  That day, the Germans made us go out into the yard. It was full of people. They told us to try to find members of our own families and to stay in groups with our relatives so that, when we reached our destination, they’d be able to allocate a house to us, depending on the size of each family. After looking around for a while, I managed to find my mother and my three sisters. My cousins also found their parents, their young brother Samy, and Yakob’s wife. The fact that we were all together reassured us. We tried to convince ourselves that the Germans were telling the truth and that we’d be given that house. We’d have to work hard, of course, but at least we’d be able to stay together. That was the main thing.

  Then my mother told me that on the day my brother and I had been locked up, the Germans had searched the school and taken all those in it. My little sister Marica had been entrusted to a non-Jewish lady who lived near the school; my sister did the housework in exchange for meals and a roof over her head. But, when Monica learned that the Germans were going to deport her family, she ran off to join my mother. I’ve often told myself that if she hadn’t known what was happening she’d definitely have stayed with that family and might have been saved. But things didn’t work out that way and, unfortunately, she was deported too.

  It was cunning of the Germans to get us together in our families. When you’re alone, the idea of escaping is more tempting. But how can you think of abandoning your parents or your children? And yet, a few people did manage to escape, almost by chance. On the path between the prison and the freight station the trucks carrying us followed along one after the other. A German guard was seated near the driver and kept an eye on the passengers in the truck ahead. One of these trucks broke down and so, of course, the one ahead of it didn’t have anybody to keep a
n eye on the rear. Five or six young boys jumped off and escaped, but the Germans soon had everything under control again.

  We finally arrived on the platforms. There were cattle cars waiting for us. The Germans pushed us brutally into the wagons. Inside there was nothing, just planks on the floor, a big empty can in the middle, and a smaller one with water. In a corner, I saw three crates of raisins and carrots. The space was very limited, and as soon as everyone had climbed aboard, we saw that it would be impossible to stretch out; at best we would need to stay seated throughout the journey. I immediately sat in a corner near the window.

  Men were starting to turn up near the station to start work – this is why the Germans wanted to hurry, so as not to attract too much attention. Looking out the window, I saw an SS officer starting to get angry with some people who seemed to be from the Red Cross. I thought they were there because they wanted to free us. But they simply wanted to hand out some food for our journey. I believe they knew what our final destination was, since they wouldn’t have taken any trouble if it had been just a short trip, even in these conditions. Eventually they came to an agreement, and the SS officer allowed the Red Cross trucks to follow the train until it stopped outside the city. Through the window, I could see the trucks following us at a distance. The train stopped out in the open country, so that the Red Cross personnel could distribute parcels of food and blankets.

  What were the windows of the carriage like? Was there barbed wire on them?

  There were four little windows. In my carriage, the windows didn’t have any barbed wire, but I saw that others did. This was definitely the first convoy to leave Athens and not all the carriages had yet been “adapted.” When we reached Vienna, barbed wire was installed on our carriage. We felt even more oppressed, stifled, and humiliated. Until then, I had put my head out the window for almost the entire journey to get some fresh air and to see what was happening. This is what allowed me, at the beginning, to pick up a larger number of parcels. The Red Cross people tried to give us as many as they could, and the important thing was to grab hold of them. I picked up the parcels and the blankets, and threw them back to my brother and cousin, who were making room in the carriage. After a few minutes, the officer yelled, “Fertig!” “That’s it!” and ordered the Red Cross people to leave. As soon as they had gone, the soldiers went around the carriages to find out how many parcels everyone had received. I saw the German asking someone in the carriage ahead of ours how many he’d gotten. The young man replied that he’d gotten eight, and the German then ordered him to hand over four. In any case, they wouldn’t have come into the carriages to check, that would have taken too much time; one just needed to say something plausible in reply to them. So when the German stopped in front of me and asked how many I had, I, too, replied that I had eight. As I’d anticipated, he directed me to throw out four. In fact, I’d picked up thirty-eight parcels and several blankets. In every parcel there were wheat wafers, powdered milk, chocolate, cigarettes, and other useful things to keep us going throughout the journey. Of course, we shared with the other people in the carriage. At least that way we had enough to survive the eleven days that the train journey lasted.

  How many of you were in the carriages?

  There must have been between seventy and eighty people. Among those deported in the carriages I knew several people who had been taken from Salonika at the same time as my family.

  From Athens the train was meant to go via Salonika, which was an important railway junction in the north. The train stopped near the station to replenish its coal and water. I went up to the skylight to see if there was anyone outside I might recognize. German soldiers were posted every ten yards along the train. As chance would have it, the railway man who was checking the track was a young fellow I did know. His name was Gyorgos Kaloudis; he was five or six years older than I and had been a neighbor of mine when we were children. His father had also worked on the railways and was a known communist. The older man had been arrested by the Germans as soon as they entered Salonika. Gyorgos had replaced his father on the railways. His work consisted of ensuring that the brakes didn’t block the wheels, and adjusting them with a long hammer. When he saw me, he appeared very surprised and slipped over, pretending to be working on my carriage. Without being noticed by the Germans, he said, in Greek, “What’s going on? You here too? Try to get the hell out of here; where they’re taking you, they just kill everybody!” He also told me that we were going to Poland. I wasn’t able to ask him anything else; the Germans were keeping an eye on us.

  When the train began to move again, I immediately told my brother and my cousins what Gyorgos had just told me. It had taken us two days to get from Athens to Salonika and it would be another two days before we got out of Greek territory. Up until then, we’d foolishly believed that the Greek resistance fighters would attack the train out in the open country to free us and prevent the deportations from happening. They’d promised they would do so, at the time we were with them. But Gyorgos’s words made me realize that there was no point in waiting and that we had to try to escape by ourselves. But that meant leaving our families behind…. While we were on Greek territory, escaping would have been less dangerous – we would have found it relatively easy to hide out with the peasants. They’d have seen us as resistance fighters, rather than as Jews, and helped us. Once we were on Yugoslav territory things would start to get more difficult. So we tried to escape that evening.

  We were thin enough to get out through the window and slip along the outside of the moving train. It was a big risk, since the Germans were keeping guard in turrets built on top of some of the carriages. I’d noted that one carriage in every three was occupied by SS. But we were determined. My brother was going to jump first, then I would. We’d have moved forward to join our cousins, who were going to jump after us. My brother didn’t have time to stick his leg out. Already, everybody in the carriage had woken up and started yelling and crying. They were sure we were going to get ourselves killed and that they’d be killed too, for letting us escape. Dario’s father, Milton, kept saying over and over, “They know how many of us there are. When the train reaches its destination and they see you’re not there, they’ll kill us all.” In fact, this didn’t change the outcome: all of them died anyway. But who could have known that then? When we saw them crying, when we saw how terrified and distraught my mother and sisters were, we began to feel that it wasn’t fair to leave them alone were we to try to save ourselves. Had the others in the car not realized what we planned to do, we’d possibly have managed to escape and save ourselves. In any case, we tried again once more, the next day. But Milton stayed awake and kept an eye on us to stop us trying to get away. We held back as before. Eventually, we left Greek territory. We crossed Yugoslavia, then Austria. In Vienna, with the barbed wire installed, we finally lost all hope of freedom.

  Were you able to speak with your mother during the journey?

  No, I couldn’t even get close to her, there was no room to move. To preserve a little privacy, a blanket had been spread out to separate the men from the women. A second blanket was used to curtain off the can that was used as a toilet. We could hardly move. In any case, we didn’t talk much. Everyone was absorbed in his or her own thoughts and was sunk in gloom. There was nothing we could say to each other, as we were all in the same situation. We were there, finished; that was all. The idea of escape, of having wasted what was perhaps our only chance…. Everyone knew that we had nothing good to hope for. But I think it’s usual to try to hang on to a shred of hope. That’s why I didn’t tell my family what I’d heard my childhood friend tell me.

  Deep down, did you believe Gyorgos, or did you believe the Germans who told you that they were sending you to the East to work?

  Both. On the one side, I wanted to convince myself that Gyorgos was merely peddling rumors and that it was absurd for the Germans to go to so much effort just to kill us as soon as we arrived. Nobody could believe that, but history has shown that Gyor
gos was right. At that time, the Germans had already started to build the ramp that was to take the train right inside the camp. This was April 1944, and they were no longer so worried about non-German railway workers seeing the inside of the camp. I suppose that’s how Gyorgos heard about what was happening in Auschwitz.

  Did the train make any other stops?

  Yes, it had already made one stop while we were still on Greek territory, so that the can we used as a toilet could be emptied. Actually, after just two days, the can was already overflowing, but we’d had to wait for that stop before they’d allow us to empty it. And in any case, that was the only time. Soldiers stood at a distance of fifteen yards or so to ensure that nobody would try to escape. When the doors of the carriage opened, I climbed out with three other boys, carrying the can that was full of excrement. We wanted to empty it right by the train, but the soldier told us to go a bit farther. Getting out of the carriage where we’d been shut up for several days, breathing the fresh air and seeing the daylight in that big open space made us feel really strange. It made it even harder to get back into the carriage. The carriage door stayed open for a quarter of an hour, but this was far from enough to refresh the air. We had to go back to the stench, that overpowering mixture of rubbish, excrement, and sweaty bodies.